It was not until January 29th, 1805, that the expedition left Spithead, and before Mungo Park left Peebles he rode over to Clovenfords, where Sir Walter Scott was then residing, to stay a night with him at Ashestiel.  On the following morning Sir Walter accompanied him a short distance on the return journey, and when they were parting where a small ditch divided the moor from the road Park’s horse stumbled a little.  Sir Walter said, “I am afraid, Mungo, that is a bad omen,” to which Park replied, smiling, “Friets (omens) follow those that look for them,” and so they parted for ever.  In company with his friends Anderson and Scott he explored the rivers Gambia and Niger, but his friends died, and Dr. Park himself was murdered by hostile natives who attacked his canoe in the River Niger.

Quite near our lodgings was the house where this famous African traveller lived and practised blood-letting as a surgeon, and where dreams of the tent in which he was once a prisoner and of dark faces came to him at night, while the door at which his horse was tethered as he went to see Sir Walter Scott, and the window out of which he put his head when knocked up in the night, were all shown as objects of interest to visitors.  Mungo had at least one strange patient, and that was the Black Dwarf, David Ritchie, who lies buried close to the gate in the old churchyard.  This was a horrid-looking creature, who paraded the country as a privileged beggar.  He affected to be a judge of female beauty, and there was a hole in the wall of his cottage through which the fair maidens had to look, a rose being passed through if his fantastic fancies were pleased; but if not, the tiny window was closed in their faces.  He was known to Sir Walter Scott, who adopted his name in one of his novels, The Bowed Davie of the Windus.  His cottage, which was practically in the same state as at the period of David Ritchie’s death, bore a tablet showing that it had been restored by the great Edinburgh publishers W. and R. Chambers, who were natives of Peebles, and worded:  “In memory D.R., died 1811.  W. and R. Chambers, 1845.”

Dr. Pennicuick, who flourished A.D. 1652-1722, had written: 

  Peebles, the Metropolis of the shire,
  Six times three praises doth from me require;
  Three streets, three ports, three bridges, it adorn,
  And three old steeples by three churches borne,
  Three mills to serve the town in time of need. 
  On Peebles water, and on River Tweed,
  Their arms are proper, and point forth their meaning,
  Three salmon fishes nimbly counter swimming;

but there were other “Threes” connected with Peebles both before and after the doctor’s time:  “The Three Tales of the Three Priests of Peebles,” supposed to have been told about the year 1460 before a blazing fire at the “Virgin Inn.”

There were also the Three Hopes buried in the churchyard, whose tombstone records: